| Recollections by Eric Chase, Paul Fairweather, Dennis Graue and Michael Georgiades |
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| Michael Georgiades, Paul Fairweather, Dennis Graue and Eric Chase |
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Eric Chase Recalls The Gross National Product
It all started in Dennis Graue’s basement: A bunch of kids trying to live their rock and roll dreams. The difference was, we were all good musicians, and we practiced a lot. Members came and went in the early months: Don Chambers (bass and piano) and John Buell (drums). The first group that gelled well featured Dennis Graue on lead vocal and organ, Mike Georgiades on lead guitar, John Borton on drums, Richard Manderbach on rhythm guitar, and me, Eric Chase, on bass. Within a few months John Borton dropped out, and so did Richard Manderbach, to return to college. Paul Fairweather joined as our drummer, and that was the group that began to have some real success. It was the fabled Summer of Love, 1967. Here are some memories I have, not in any chronological order. |
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| Eric Chase, Michael Georgiades, John Borton, Dennis Graue and Richard Manderbach |
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| Eric Chase |
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I remember a club called It’s Camp, on either Vineland or Lankersheim Blvd. in North Hollywood, managed by a guy named Lou. I remember that we really did well in that place. There was a big line to get in each night we played after the first few times as word got out. We couldn’t afford good amps, but we had decent instruments and we played them well. The main thing is that we wrote music together and we practiced enough to be tight. We could all play.
I remember playing a battle of the bands at the Hullabaloo Club, which was formerly the Aquarius Theater, which was formerly the Moulin Rouge Ballroom on Hollywood Boulevard where the old TV show Queen For A Day was shot, hosted by the amazing (?) Jack Narz. I wonder what Jack Narz’ real name was. It had a revolving stage, so we set up facing the back wall of the theater, and when it was our turn they rotated the stage and we started playing before we could even see the audience. I think Taj Mahal was on the bill that night, and The Grass Roots too. I remember Taj started his set by blowing on a big conch shell. Another band in that contest was a band called Chain Mail. They hung a bunch of chains on their amps. They won the battle of the bands that night. Years later I was having lunch with a land use planner on Maui, and we got to reminiscing about our youths. His name was Charlie, and he mentioned having been in a band in the ‘60’s in L.A. I asked him what his band’s name was and he said, “Chain Mail”. He was their bass player, and he remembered that gig the same way I did, including Taj blowing the conch. We came in third I think. Not one of our best performances. |
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| Live At It's Camp |
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I remember playing at Pandora’s Box on Sunset Strip, where Tower Records was in later years. Seemed like everybody played there who was any good. I remember one night coming out on a break to have a smoke, and seeing an MTD bus lying on it’s side in the street up the hill to the west on Sunset. The bus had apparently been out of service, broken down, and was parked there for some time, empty. The “Pigs” had been arresting kids off the street for some weeks that spring (’67) just hassling everyone in general, and the kids were getting really angry about it. So apparently a bunch of them got to rocking this empty bus just to vent their anger at the cops, and it started really rocking, and more kids pitched in and pretty soon they must have managed to flop it over on its side. I remember seeing a limo pass by the club on Sunset just then as I was standing there, and Stephen Stills was hanging his head out the window looking back at the bus. I always wondered if Stephen wrote the song 'For What It’s Worth' about that bus incident and that time period in Hollywood. I always wanted to ask him about that.
I remember playing a gig with the original Iron Butterfly (prior to the release of their first album) at a club called the Galaxy Club on Sunset, just two doors up from the Whisky. The Whisky-A-Go-Go was on the corner, then Sneaky Pete’s next up to the west, then the Galaxy Club. Iron Butterfly had a great guitarist named Danny Weis (who later was in a band called Rhinoceros) and a lead singer named Darryl who could dance better than Mick Jagger. Darryl danced a lot with no shirt on and he had these two tambourines that he would twirl. It had quite an effect on the ladies, as I recall. This was before Iron Butterfly changed personnel and recorded ‘In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.’ Check with Doug Ingle about these recollections.
I remember going to a club in Hollywood called Bito Lido’s and seeing Arthur Lee and Love play. We were big fans of this great band, a very under-appreciated group. They had three great tunes we did covers of – ‘My Little Red Book,’ ‘Colored Balls Falling’ and ‘Signed D.C.’ The club was jammed each time they played. |
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| Live At The Pasadena Civic Auditorium |
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The photo of us with the fog on stage was taken at a gig at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium. It was a Saturday night, I remember, but I can’t recall the month or year (hey, it was the ‘60’s). The headliners that night were Sky Saxon and The Seeds, who had a big hit with ‘Pushin’ Too Hard’. We were the final act on stage, and the photo was taken right at midnight, when the concert promoter’s permit expired, and the lights were suddenly brought up. There were around one thousand kids dancing at the time the photo was shot. We did have them rocking that night.
I remember that The Doors were the house band at the Whisky in early ’67, opening for other bigger acts, such as Cream with Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce, and Ginger Baker (that was a great night; I stood right at Clapton’s feet at the edge of the stage and watched every lick he played for two hours). This was before The Doors recorded their first album. I remember going in there several times, often sneaking in the stage door from the alley behind, and seeing Jim Morrison always wearing the same T-shirt. It had big horizontal stripes. |
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| Las Vegas Convention Center |
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When we played the later gig with The Doors at the Las Vegas Convention Center (August 25, 1967), I remember asking Jim why he always wore that same T-shirt on stage. He laughed and said it was the only good shirt he had. As I recall, he was just a starving film student at UCLA at the time in question. At the Vegas gig he was wearing his Lizard King leather pants and jacket with no shirt underneath, and he was somewhat drunk which was pretty common for Jim. At one point he got up and walked to a back door, outside of which were a couple of hundred young women, hoping to see him, get his autograph, etc. Jim walked past a big fat security guard who was watching that door. It was a steel door with one of those bars across it to open it with. All of a sudden Jim wheeled around and hit the bar on the door, opening it about a foot. Two hundred girls screamed as he stuck his head out. I will never forget the sound they made, it was frightening, deafening. I was standing right next to him as the security guard shoved him away from the door, and struggled to get the girls’ arms and legs back outside. The guard was sweating hard once he got the door shut again, and Morrison was just standing there grinning and laughing. I think Paul Fairweather remembers this incident about the same way I do.
The Doors had arrived at the venue pretty early (as Dennis reminds me), and they left the Las Vegas Convention Center just as the first band of four, The Outlaw Blues Band, was starting their set. The Outlaw Blues Band was a last-minute addition to the bill, and they did not get their name on the marquee. The other band on the bill was The Hamilton Streetcar. They were founded by Forrest Hamilton, son of jazz drummer Chico Hamilton. So The Doors left the venue for a time, leaving a luscious buffet (which we took full advantage of) and trailing their William Morris Agency reps, and they headed over to the concert promoter’s suite at the Frontier Hotel.
The concert promoter for the Vegas gig was Dickie Winchell, the son of the founder of Winchell’s Donuts. Our late band manager, Tom Nieto, worked for Dickie. In fact, I think Tommy was the one who talked Dickie into promoting concerts. Dickie apparently had some big money to play with. Tommy did a lot of promotional work for that concert, as did our band members, tacking up posters on telephone poles around Las Vegas and appearing on the local radio station to promote the concert. At that time, the radio station was in a little tiny building out near the Las Vegas airport, which was on the outskirts of town, surrounded by desert. That’s not the case any more; the empty desert is all gone, as is the convention center!
Anyway, back at the gig…The Doors were over at the Frontier when we took the stage for our set. We walked up the stairs and turned left and spread out to where our amps had been placed (by our roadie, Navarre Matlovsky). We all noticed that The Doors’ equipment was also on stage, and that they were using the same brand of amplifiers we were (Jordan Electronics), except that their amps were the big ones, with over 100 watts each and the big James B. Lansing (JBL) speakers with the silver drivers inside. We also all noticed that the Doors’ amps were powered up. We knew they weren’t in the building. I looked at Dennis, and at Michael, and plugged in to Ray’s bass amp (Ray Manzarek, the Doors’ keyboardist, who also handled their bass lines with his left hand). Dennis then plugged into Ray’s organ amp and Michael plugged into Robbie’s amp (Robbie Krieger, lead guitarist).
Now, if we were anything at that point we were a tight band, having played together for over a year. Our set was all original music. If I may say so we were pretty amazing that night. From the first note, the crowd rose to their feet and rushed the stage. There we were in our matching purple pin-striped bell bottom pants, paisley shirts with big puffy sleeves, red paisley silk bandanas, white loafers (who the hell had that bright idea?) and red vests with embroidery all over them. We felt like idiots in those clothes, but the effect was apparently good. The crowd responded wildly, and I think there were like 5,000 people in the building. I won’t ever forget how the hair on my neck stood up at the sound we were making with those big amps and the way the crowd was freaking out. It was a truly memorable night. A few years ago I was backstage at the Doors of the 21st Century gig at the Concord Pavilion, thanks to my old pal Arthur Dansker, who has been Robbie Krieger’s road manager for many years. I had a chance to thank Robbie and Ray for the use of their equipment that night.
This all started in Dennis Graue’s basement. When we started working together, we had no inkling of where it would lead. What a trip it was. |
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| Paul Fairweather |
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Paul Fairweather Recalls The Gross National Product
Those certainly were fun days if not exciting. I played in several bands in the Pasadena, California area which were both surf and rock oriented until I joined The Gross National Product. Until then I played mostly bars and parties doing cover songs. The Gross National Product was a step up in that they did mostly original songs which was unusual at that time. Plus they had set gigs every weekend. My biggest gig before The Gross National Product was when I played at Pandora's Box, which was a 300 square foot garage set between two traffic lanes in Hollywood. When you looked out the front and back doors all you saw were cars going right by. It was very strange.
After I joined The Gross National Product we played bigger gigs with bigger audiences. One particular night we were scheduled to play the Aquarius Theater on Sunset Blvd. in Hollywood. It was where Hair, the musical, was eventually put on. I think it was called the Hullabaloo at the time. It was an old curved dinner theater back in the '40s and '50s and I think the seating capacity was 700-800 people. The stage was a revolving type and there were 12 or so groups playing that night, and I believe The Grass Roots were headlining. I had never played in front of that many people and had my first bout of stage fright. So my father gave me two valiums which I took because otherwise I would probably not have shown up for the gig. Anyway it was a big mistake for a drummer. It was like being in a bad dream where you can’t get out of your own way. When we got to the theater we had to wait in line with our gear set up, and keep moving it all forward up a ramp until we were near the stage. We passed the time talking to other band members who were all really cool guys, then all of a sudden we were next to play. The group that was playing came around to the back and scrambled off and we had two minutes to set up set up - if you could call it that. Then we turned on the table and were starring at 800 people. Whew! I didn’t have the right spurs for my drums and ended up playing with everything about one foot away from where it should have been. Michael and our bass player, Eric Chase, had their amps up full volume and my ears were ringing so I couldn’t hear lead singer Dennis Graue’s voice. Now there are ear monitors to keep that from happening . My ears still ring to this day from that night; we played our set and came off and it was still a blast, even to this day. I mean it was '67; how bad could things be compared to today? |
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| Dennis Graue |
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Dennis Graue Recalls The Gross National Product
There were a lot of changes in The Gross National Product, which was formed in the basement of my parent’s house overlooking South Pasadena High School - where Eric Chase, Richard Manderbach and I went to school. As Eric indicated, we used to practice a lot and write a lot of original music. And as we progressed we got better and better. I think collectively we are rehashing our fond memories and that’s good because, when you think about it, the 40-year anniversary of playing with The Doors - which was one of our highlights - was August 25th, 2007 (as Michael Georgiades reminds me). I’m very pleased to be part of this reminiscing.
I remember playing It’s Camp. Because I was the frontman, I checked out Rod Stewart and Mick Jagger and I used to do all the early gyrations and antics like Jagger and play harmonica and tambourine before I added the organ. I even scored Bill Wyman’s girlfriend (when he was in Los Angeles) - who was a blonde fox - for a couple of nights after the It’s Camp gig.
It was amazing to me that most of the bands were playing cover tunes and we were having success with originals. When we played the Las Vegas Convention Center, The Doors arrived early. Eric has done a good job jogging memories about that gig, but I remember talking to Jim Morrison, probably after the incident that Paul and Eric remember. They might have been checking their equipment or diving into to the luscious catered food that was backstage. Morrison told me, “Ya know the kids in Vegas don’t really know exactly how we look, because they have little cassettes in their Daddy’s and Mommy’s Lincolns and Caddys. Here…I’ll show you.” He then opened up the backstage door and yelled, “The Doors!” and pointed in the other backstage direction. Screaming girls and some guys went right past him and the security guards had to force them back outside. This is when ‘Light My Fire’ was just beginning to become a huge hit. This is a vivid memory for me, but I didn’t know or forgot about The Doors going to the Frontier Hotel, as Eric points out, to watch themselves on Ed Sullivan.
I’m glad Paul reminded me of The Aquarius Theatre. That was a fun gig even though we came in third in the contest. When we weren’t working, we were checking out the groups that were playing the better venues in Hollywood. We saw The Byrds, John Mayall and The Blues Breakers, Eric Clapton and Taj Mahal. When we went to see Steppenwolf at the Whisky A-Go-Go, the B-3 Organ player had four leslies - two on either side of the stage - that were customized. When they played ‘Born To Be Wild,’ the roof practically blew off the joint it was so loud.
I also remember the Galaxy, up the street from the Whisky, next to Gazzarri’s. One night, the bass player broke a string so the house band, The Iron Butterfly, took a break and all jumped into one of the guy’s cars and drove to Wallich’s Music City to get a bass string. The guitar player, Danny, sat down on the edge of the stage while the others went to the music store. He started playing Segovia on an electric Mosrite Guitar followed by ‘Beck’s Boogie’. My tongue was hanging down so far I started tripping on it. That guy was incredible! As Eric reminds me, the Butterfly had a wild lead singer who fronted the band before they started to record. When they became famous, Doug, the keyboard player and leader, became the lead singer and Danny Weis left the group. The new 17-year old on guitar that recorded with them was very good for his age, but had to learn Danny’s feel and tone, and I think we all agree he wasn’t as good as Danny.
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| Dennis Graue |
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The campus of Pasadena City Collage had an east courtyard where we use to hang in between classes. There was a guy that would play guitar and he would tell me, “Listen to this” and I would say, “Yeah, yeah that’s nice…but keep your day job - or don’t you have a class to go to?” It was Kenny Loggins! Open mouth and insert foot.
Pasadena City Collage, which was a two-year accredited college, had the best music department in the state for a junior college. Next to the east courtyard, across the side street, was a Bob’s Big Boy restaurant. There was a guy who put himself through college by betting customers that he could blow smoke through his ears. I don’t know what was up with this guy, but we used to go over there and eat and I would watch this guy take a big drag off a cigarette and hold his breath, turn red in the face and somehow blow smoke through his ears. He made a lot of money doing this.
As I mentioned earlier, there were a lot of changes in the Gross National Product. One of the generations of the band played at the Cheetah, which was the old Aragon Ballroom where Lawrence Welk used to play when my parents were young. We played there with Ten Years After and I had to stand down wind from Alvin Lee, their incredible guitarist, who seemed like he hadn’t showered in a week. When we started to play, Emperor Vito and his dancers came in and took over the dance floor. We knew of these people from the Frank Zappa gigs, because they would follow Zappa around and go into these weird gyrations and antics on the dance floor, and developed a reputation for this. They loved our music and us!
I ended up going into the Army after the group broke up, and got out in Hawaii where I was born. That was in 1971, and I then started my 34 years of being a major player in the Hawaii music scene, leading up to becoming Don Ho’s music conductor, arranger, and keyboardist for his last seven years.
I think the reason Eric and I are close is because he used to live and work in Hawaii, even though he now lives in California. But talking to Paul and Michael through e-mails lately has been very pleasurable.
Eric has some tunes he wants to record, so after all these years I hope we can get back together and play again. That would be a memorable experience! I’m glad all of the Product are doing well and are still alive. God bless you guys!
To visit Dennis' website, or to purchase his solo CDs, check out the below websites:
www.dennisgraue.com/
http://cdbaby.com/cd/dgraue
http://cdbaby.com/cd/dgraue2 |
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| Michael Georgiades |
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Michael Georgiades Recalls The Gross National Product
I have always been a sentimentalist. I have pictures, letters from every girlfriend I ever had, ticket stubs and programs from concerts I don’t remember going to, magazines…whatever; if I did it and something came with it, I’ve probably still got it. Recently, I was happy to find that I had kept a lot of Gross National Product stuff, most of which I didn’t remember even having. In a flurry of emails over the past few weeks, I have had the chance to reconnect with Eric Chase and Dennis Graue for the first time in 40 years. Along with Paul Fairweather, with whom I have maintained a steady and close friendship since 1966, the four of us are reunited in a very beautiful way and are reminded that not only did we have a great band, but that we truly were and are friends that shared a unique musical chemistry during an amazing period in American life.
This becomes evident in reading what Eric, Paul, and Dennis wrote, some stories that I have long forgotten. I remember once going out to Red Rock Canyon in the Mojave Desert in California with about two hundred of our closest fans, renting a power generator, setting up a stage, getting unbelievably high and playing under the stars for a bunch of whacked out friends. I remember we would rehearse at Dennis’ house, which overlooked the South Pasadena High School football field. We would open the doors whenever we knew the cheerleader and pompom girls were out there and play real loud to get their attention. Every now and then we would get a few of them to come up and watch us rehearse; we would always play better when we had an audience.
The Gross National Product had the ability to write and play original material and I think that was what set us apart from many of the bands that were around at the time. I was going to Pasadena City College studying music in the day and working at Lamb Ambulance from 5:00pm to 8:00am. I had been playing guitar for around six years when a mutual friend of ours, Mark Rohlffs, suggested that I meet Dennis Graue, Eric Chase, and Richard Manderbach who were playing together in South Pasadena. We hit it off and began to play together and that group became phase one of the Gross National Product. As Dennis said, we went through a few personnel changes as the band continued to evolve. As Eric recounts, we really started to click when Paul joined and we went from five people to four. There are probably countless stories that will continue to come out as things unfold and people come out of the woodwork after seeing this website. I love the fact that all four of us are into it and, as Dennis said, still alive. |
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| Michael Georgiades On Stage At It's Camp |
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I left the band in 1968 after listening to bad advice from questionable management. Since the end of the Gross National Product, I have continued to write and record with lots of people and have had a fun and interesting life. It’s really great that we all have a chance to revisit a period in time that for me, I can honestly say, was one of the best experiences I had in playing with other musicians.
There are two different, rather unexplainable stories that I want to recount before I close. For over thirty years, Paul Fairweather and I had been trying to locate Dennis and Eric to find what had become of them and so on…Neither of us had any idea where they were or how to find them. One day in 1996, I left my house to go to the local market to buy something and as I got out of the car, I noticed this guy sitting on the ground with his back against the wall of the market, drinking a 40-ounce Colt 45. He looked like a burned out surfer with dirty, stringy blond hair who had been living outside and was muttering to himself or to someone I couldn’t see. As I walked by him, he blurted out in a low growl “I know you”. I stopped in front of him and thought something like, oh man, here we go. I asked him who he thought I was. The next words out of his mouth stopped me cold. “You were in the Gross National Product. I used to watch you play guitar.” Needless to say, I was completely stunned. I asked him his name and he told me but it was no one I remembered and have since forgotten. The only thing I could manage to say back to him was “how did you possibly recognize me after all these years”? He looked up and stared at me and again in a soft growl said, “you don’t look all that different”. I then asked him if he had any idea where to find Dennis Graue and again he answered with one word, ”Hawaii,” and that was it. Paul looked him up in the phone book, found he was listed and went over to visit for a weekend. I guess Eric was living over there at the time and the three of them hung out. For whatever reason, I couldn’t make the trip and missed out on that reunion. I never found out who that guy was or what became of him.
The second odd occurrence happened a few weeks ago when, out of the blue, Mike Dugo from 60sgaragebands.com contacted me about some other band I had been part of after the Gross National Product and happened to ask me if I had been in any other bands before that. I then started to tell him all about this little band a long time ago from Pasadena called The Gross National Product…
Many thanks M.D. Many thanks and much love to the Gross National Product. |
Personnel:
Dennis Graue - Keyboards and vocals
Richard Manderbach - Guitar
Eric Chase - Bass
John Borton - Drums
Michael Georgiades - Guitar
John was replaced by Paul Fairweather on drums and Richard Manderbach left the band in early '67.
Recordings:
We never got around to formally recording, but five original songs that were recorded at Graue's house during the first period of the band still exist:
You're Gonna Miss Me
Fall To Prey
Shadowed On Me
All The Time
Little Girl
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| Dennis Graue and Eric Chase |
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| Paul Fairweather |
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Gross National Product Poster Gallery |
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